Native actress Irene Bedard hobnobs with Gallup audience

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Native actress Irene Bedard gave a UNM-Gallup audience some insights on Wednesday into her acting career, as well as a sneak peak into her upcoming concert.

Bedard was accompanied by her husband, musician Deni Wilson, and by Laura Ortman, a classically trained violinist from the White Mountain Apache tribe who currently works as a musician in New York City.

Bedard, Wilson, and Ortman opened and closed Wednesday’s workshop with music. Bedard, with lead vocals, performed storyteller-like lyrics, accompanied by Wilson on guitar and Ortman on violin. However, for the bulk of the program, Bedard talked about her performing arts career and answered questions from the audience.

“I started out as a really shy girl,” she said, describing herself as a quiet child with glasses who sat in the front row at school trying to absorb everything her teachers taught. The daughter of a French Candian/Cree father from Maine and an Inupiat mother, Bedard said she grew up around her mother’s family in rural Alaska.

She began writing plays and creating dramatic roles for herself when she was 10 years old.

“I could be someone outside myself,” Bedard recalled. Now, she said, acting has the opposite result. “I can be more of myself,” she explained.

Bedard graduated to acting roles in junior high productions — like the blonde Alice in “Alice in Wonderland,” and singing and acting in her high school choir and drama club. She eventually landed a scholarship to attend the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pa., where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

At the university, she recalled, she studied everything from speech to sword fighting and modern dance to African dance.

“I got to do a lot of wonderful things,” she said. “I learned so much at that school,” she added.

After college, Bedard moved to New York where she met up with other Native performers and formed a theater company. One of the scripts they wrote, she recalled with amusement, was about a group of Indian activists who plot to blow up Mount Rushmore with plastic explosives, but they can only raise enough money to blow the noses off the presidential sculptures.

At about this time, Bedard said, she signed with her agent. That led to an offer to appear in the soap opera “As the World Turns” and a conflicting offer for a movie screen test. Bedard chose the screen test and was offered a three-movie deal. Unfortunately, she explained, she had to turn down the first movie role because of its inaccurate portrayal of Alaska Natives.

“The movie was about my people, and it was wrong. We don’t have horses in Alaska,” she said. “I just couldn’t do it to my mother.”

Eventually, Bedard did land her first movie role in the film “Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale.” Although some Native Americans view Squanto negatively for his help of the early British settlers in North America, Bedard sees him differently.

“To me that’s a hero ... ” she said. “He saw that they were human beings and they were suffering.”

Acting in such period films and learning about the lives of historical characters has deepened her understanding, she said, of the human condition.

Although she has been cast in a number of historical roles, Bedard said she is interested in portraying more contemporary women. A number of recent film projects — “Tortilla Heaven,” “Cosmic Radio,” “Tree of Life,” and “Kissed by Lightening” — have given her that opportunity, she said.

She is particularly interested in telling the stories of contemporary Native American women. One such story, she said, is that of Molly Spotted Elk (1903-1977), a Penobscot dancer, nightclub entertainer, and actress who moved to Europe and married a French journalist. Bedard said she is currently planning a film project about Spotted Elk, who fled Europe with the outbreak of World War II and who lost her husband in the war. Such film projects help move Native women out of the pages of history and into contemporary society.

Bedard, Wilson, Ortman, and Native comedian Drew Lacapa will perform at 7 p.m. on Friday at El Morro Theater, 207 W. Coal. Tickets are $15 for the general public and $12 for UNM-Gallup students with student I.D.